


Abyss (The Night Remix)

by EmmaDeMarais



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4182072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaDeMarais/pseuds/EmmaDeMarais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The seeds of darkness live within us all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abyss (The Night Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Noxnoctisanima](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noxnoctisanima/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Abyss](https://archiveofourown.org/works/379389) by [Noxnoctisanima](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noxnoctisanima/pseuds/Noxnoctisanima). 



It’s in the calm after, the night spent pretending to sleep on the plane home, when the abyss calls.

After a soccer mom smothers her babies…  
After the quiet man next door annihilates three families…  
After a sadist gleefully tortures young blonde women…

It’s easy, too easy to put names to those nightmare faces, to call them psychopath and sociopath as if that moniker covers up the painful truth…

They were all human.

Each profiler feels it, that line between them and a similar madness, knowing that it’s the tiniest of steps before one falls into the pit from which there is no return.

A finger pulls a trigger…  
A knife plunges into defenseless flesh…  
A bat falls to the ground beside a bloodied head… 

Every person has within them the seed of violence, dormant yet fertile, waiting. A trigger is all it takes: one moment when morals fail, when laws fall away, when the animal instinct for survival leaps ahead of humanity and rips and tears with teeth and claws previously hidden and released in adrenaline.

We, all of us, could say “I would never…” yet until that moment comes, none of us know for sure.

So fragile is a life, one second can change it forever or wipe it from existence.

It’s that seed, born in the abyss, that is fed by circumstance and watered with weeping tears. It thrives on abuse, grows with resentment, shares a hunger for revenge, all the while its nascent tendrils snaking their way into a soon to be black heart.

Those who hunt the hunters see the vines of violence where they grow and fester, placing hands to chest as if to reassure their own hearts are still resistant, still pure. That road lays before them with every journey, courting them to take that wrong turn, to be beckoned into the void.

Aaron feels the heavy hand of the father on his usually strong shoulders. He knows how that power can be abused, how the vulnerable can so easily be broken by cruelty. When his own temper rises inside like acid in his gorge he fights it down with a revulsion born of recognition. He swears to himself he will never become his own father with his son, but each time Jack pushes him, doesn’t listen and winds up doing something stupid or dangerous the temptation reminds him just how much he understands those fathers who couldn’t seem to help but raise a hand.

Derek pushes back against his sick memories of love and molestation with a fervor not unlike how he pushes away women who get close enough to want to touch that part of him he feels has been tainted forever. That love and acceptance he so desperately craved to fill the dad shaped hole in his childhood became something so twisted he can no longer distinguish the good times from the bad. So he blocks it all out – with physical labor, with late night reports at the office and headphones playing his favorite songs – only he feels the walls faltering. Soon there will be no more respite; the anger and rage at having his innocence stolen away can only be kept at bay. It lives inside and feeds on that still small voice that swears never again.

Spencer sees how many serial killers wind up in mental hospitals, which makes each visit to his mother’s sanitarium harder to face. His hand used to shake on the doorknob; now both shake as he sits in his rental car in the parking lot, working to dredge up the courage to face his future. He firmly believes madness is his destiny the same way he accepts his genius would have lured him there even without the genetic curse from his mother’s DNA. He prays silently that he goes easily when the time comes, but he fears that his own team will have to lock him up after he loses it on a case. He knows the time will come when he must take himself out of the field for the protection of those they seek to punish for their crimes, lest his mind – freed from the bounds of propriety and common sense – decides to punish them himself.

JJ sits with the ghost of her beloved sister, her life draining from her, sucked away by the specter of death that hovers over her. She chases away the hungry spirits of those she couldn’t save and those she had to kill each time she embraces her loving son, but in the pre-dawn hours in flight she is unprotected. The love of a good man and the adoration of a child are but panaceas in her line of work. She has been given permission to kill on the job and she has done so, though she chants in her head that it was for the greater good, the greater good, the words turning into meaningless gibberish replaced by faces she cannot forget on the other side of her sidearm’s sights.

Emily knows the feeling of life draining from a human body; she’s held a hand gone cold as her words of encouragement failed both her and the life in her hands. In the chill air, she draws a blanket around her yet that cold never seems to leave because she’s been the one who had to take a life. She knows the feeling of life draining from her own body, sensed the pull of hell below and the gravity of her sins on earth. She has done unconscionable things in the name of justice. She has lied, cheated, lured, betrayed, sent the man who loved her away to rot in a hellhole prison. The frightening part is that it didn’t bother her as much as it should have to condemn him to a life of horrors and torture. It’s the humanity draining away that she worries about now; how soon before a life – any life at all – means nothing to her?

David remembers the years between, when he didn’t wear a gun and the worst he had to deal with was bad coffee at book signings. He’s created a pristine world out of that time, where he was a good man, but the truth lies in a notebook in his jacket pocket where the names of the lives he took in the line of duty are inked in. He takes them out and reads them regularly, thinking this will help him to be cautious and thoughtful in the field, but it’s not having the same effect it used to. Thoughts slip in about how the world is better off without them in it or a snippet of self-congratulation slides by where he becomes the hero in his little fantasy world. Once he catches himself he halts long enough to shudder and change his plea to one where he never becomes the villain.

They are all alone together, all broken yet appearing to be whole. They stare out windows, down at paperwork, anywhere but at each other and in the mirror where the abyss awaits. They focus on fighting the evil without while they continue to battle the demons within.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my betas!


End file.
